


your shadow fell like last night's rain

by magnificentmoose



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Costume Parties & Masquerades, Credence Barebone Learning Magic, Halloween, M/M, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 21:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12542108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnificentmoose/pseuds/magnificentmoose
Summary: The Obscurus is gone, and Credence ismagic.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the Gradence Hallowe'en Prompt Fest 2017!
> 
> With the Obscurus somehow removed, Credence is slowly finding his footing in the wizarding world thanks to the help of the Goldstein’s and/or Newt. He’s harboring an intense curiosity and fascination for the man whose face and life Grindelwald stole, but the most he can do is watch from a distance and quietly gather what bits of information he can from conversations and rumors. It’s not until MACUSA holds a masquerade ball on Halloween that a masked and costumed Credence is able to bring himself to actually hold an actual conversation with the real Mr. Graves, but instead of sating his curiosity the encounter only makes it worse. (Trick One).
> 
> Title is taken from the song 'Shadow' by The Chromatics.

Credence wakes to the sound of hushed voices. His forehead is pounding and from his blurred vision, he can see three figures with their backs turned away from him, heads bent together in fierce conference. With a slight horror, he recognizes them from the train station, and he props his body up from where it has been placed on a blue sofa at the back of what looks to be a parlor. Someone has placed a quilt over him.

“When he wakes up, every Auror from here to the Staten Island ferry will be swarming this apartment,” hisses a low, female voice. Tina. He remembers her reassurance and her promise to protect him. 

“I’ve put up wards around the apartment. He’s not a threat anymore to anyone: the Obscurus is gone,” says the man in the center, alternately placing his hands in and out of his frighteningly blue overcoat.

Tina shushes him with more force than necessary. 

“It’s okay, honey,” and this time, the third witch whose head is a halo of golden curls speaks. “You can come out now.”

It takes him a moment to realize that she is addressing him. He sits up and the three bodies in front of him turn around and face him.

“It’s okay, Credence, we’re not here to harm you. This is Mr. Newt Scamander and my sister, Queenie,” says Tina, seeing him back away ever so slightly. The door is on the opposite side of the room, and he could make it if he ran. 

Newt approaches the couch slowly as if he were something feral lurking among dead leaves in a back alley. “May I sit next to you, Credence?”

Credence gives an imperceptible nod and makes room for Newt. He feels as if every bone in his body has been consumed in a cloud of ash, but there is a large chunk of him that has been ripped out and scattered across the city. He reaches for the place at the back of his spine where the Obscurus has pooled and finds that it is oddly vacant. 

“It’s gone,” he says, the words tumbling out of his mouth. 

“When the Aurors attacked, the force of their spells were so strong we think that it was able to separate the Obscurus from you. You’re in no more danger, Credence.”

Something deep twists inside of him and his head pounds faster. It explains the absence and why he has managed to stay in one place. He feels as if his heart will beat out of his chest and launch itself into the sky.

“I’m not a squib,” he says.

Newt looks crestfallen. “No, Credence. You’re not a squib.” 

“Where’s Mr. Graves?”

“I’m sorry, Credence,” says Tina. “The man who you thought was Mr. Graves was an imposter named Gellert Grindelwald. We don’t know where the real Mr. Graves is yet.”

She unfolds a newspaper from inside her jacket pocket and hands it to him. The December 7th issue of the _New York Ghost_ is emblazoned with “ _Dark Wizard Grindelwald Captured; MACUSA security breached; Percival Graves missing_.” Two images are placed across each other on the page: one of a wizard with a shock of white hair and another of the more familiar Percival Graves. 

The man he had trusted had been a fake. Credence feels as if he has been pushed down an elevator shaft. 

“Would anyone like something to drink? I find conversation is always better with something hot,” echoes Queenie’s voice from the far side of the apartment.

Credence doesn’t dare say anything, so scared is he of intruding upon this space already or asking for something that is not needed. 

Instead, he watches something remarkable happen. With a flick of her wrist, Queenie summons milk and cocoa and teaspoons and mugs and water that soar through the air in a glorious whirlwind. In a matter of seconds, the rich, thick scent of chocolate has permeated the apartment.

Three mismatched mugs drift lazily in their direction, and Newt reaches up to pluck a cup and saucer. With practice and ease, Tina makes a grab for her chipped mug. 

The third mug, blue and square-ish, hovers in front of him, and he reaches up to take it from where it starts to wobble. He holds the cup to his lips and takes a sip; it is delicious.

Queenie beams at him. “Thank you, honey.”

He goes to take another sip when his breath starts to twitch and his whole body involuntarily gives way to shaking.

The cup falls from his hands. The sobs come quickly, but the smoke doesn’t come. He begins to heave wet, heavy sobs, but the smoke doesn’t come. Both the Obscurus and Mr. Graves are gone and his whole life is a lie.

Later he recalls that the cup did not crash; Newt had charmed it from falling.

*  
The next week passes as if in a blur; the weather takes a turn for the worse and large fat flakes pile up on the window boxes. Newt and Tina try to help him piece together the events of what has happened, and in some ways, it is easier talking to them than it was talking to Mr. Graves.

Mr. Graves. No, it was Gellert Grindelwald who had charmed him so much. It was the first time someone had talked to him as if he wasn’t scattered shards that had been clumsily sewn back together. He was the only absolute that felt like softness, like a possibility or a cup of hot cocoa. Something he had never tasted before, but that he knew he wanted nonetheless.

Graves’ fingers had been soft and warm. Graves’ mouth was even warmer.

Tina says that MACUSA has sent out a team looking for the real Mr. Graves, but they had so far been unsuccessful and Grindelwald had refused to talk. 

Tina shows him around the apartment, and when he politely asks if he may be able to take a bath, Tina leads him to the bathtub. With a wave of her wand and a burst of blue smoke, the bath has been filled with steaming water. She leaves him, and Credence feels as if he is alone for the first time since arriving in the apartment. He feels as if they’ve been tiptoeing around him, but he’s not fragile and won’t splinter into a thousand pieces if he’s touched. 

He takes off his coat and jacket; his only other set of clothes had been mangled. The dark wool trousers, blue cotton shirt, and mismatched socks had come from Newt, and they sit loosely on his frame. Evidently, the Brit had a very scatological sense of dress.

The shirt comes off, and in the pale, yellow light of the mirror, he sees his own face reflected back at him. There are a pair of thick and vicious scars that wind their way across his neck and down his spine: the mark of the separation of the Obscurus from his body. He can’t bear to look at them too long even though they spell out his liberation.

He steps into the water; it is warm and smells faintly of lavender. There is a large casement window covered in shades and with one hand, he pushes it open. The view overlooks the street and he realizes that he has walked this neighborhood many times. He had handed pamphlets out over at the street corner with the flower seller. 

The memory comes swiftly and unbothered. And then another one: his mother on the floor and Modesty screaming.

He pulls his hand away from the curtain and sinks deeper into the water. The Obscurus might be gone, but Newt says that there is still magic in him. Graves had said that, too, and had promised to teach him magic. Another memory surges, unbidden. 

On an unseasonably warm day in November, he had met Graves in Delancey Street. He had no news of the child that Graves was searching for, but Graves had not minded that time. He pushed his hands into his coat pockets and motioned for Credence to follow him. Past the vendors with signs written in Yiddish and English, old clothes stalls, hawkers, and small children running around in tattered shoes.

They couldn’t have chosen a more conspicuous place to meet. He had asked Credence more about himself in bursts of questions, and Credence would begin slowly, but his answers would pick up, and very soon he found himself chattering away about nonsensical things. When he and Modesty had taken bread down to Central Park to feed the geese. The leaves that he had pressed in between books. His favorite color.

He tried to reciprocate, asking questions in return, but Graves pretended not to hear him or gave one-word answers. He didn’t think much of it until Graves stopped and faced him.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. Credence shook his head, and Graves frowned slightly. “Over here.”

They stopped in front of a cart where a man with a beard that reached past his shoulders was selling oysters.

“Mr. Graves, I’m sorry, I don’t have any money,” but Graves had lifted his hands to silence him.

“Two each,” he said to the vendor and passed him a handful of coins that didn’t look like any piece of American currency, but the man accepted them without a second glance.

“Have you ever tried oysters before?” he asked, and again Credence said no. The vendor handed them four freshly shucked oysters and two wedges of lemon. “Watch how I do it, then.”

He took the lemon and squeezed it gently onto the glistening surface of the meat. In a single motion, he raised the shell to his lips and sucked it down. “It reminds me of home,” he said, and he looked at Credence and nodded, motioning for him to try it. 

With his hands gripping the shell more tightly than necessary, the grooves digging into his fingers, Credence applied a few drops of lemon and copied Graves’ motions. It was unlike anything he had ever tasted before: wet and slimy, but with a distinct whiff of brine. It was like he had swallowed the ocean in miniature.

“Do you like it?” asked Graves, and Credence smiled for the first time in days.

They finished the second oyster and walked back in the light of the dying afternoon sun. When they reached an alleyway close to where they had met, Graves pulled him in, flush against the brick wall. 

“I can’t be seen when I disapparate,” he said, bringing his hands to Credence’s face. And then he kissed him.

Credence had never kissed anyone before. It was as if he was having oysters for the second time that day, his mouth soft, and he could taste the salt on his lips. It felt illicit, luxurious, and it was all over too soon when Graves pulled away.

“Credence, when I see you again, you will have found the child,” and at that moment, he had vanished in a cloud that kicked up the dead leaves in the alley. 

The memory of the kiss shocks him awake, and the water has gone cold. He soaps his hair quickly and resolves that next time he will not lose track of the time. 

When he steps out in Newt’s borrowed clothes with the sleeves rolled up, he sees the Goldsteins and Newt sitting together. Tina has her hat and coat on and her cheeks are pink as if she had just gotten in from the cold. 

“Is everything alright?” he says, and the air seems to chill around the crystallized question.

“Credence, we’ve found Mr. Graves.”


	2. Chapter 2

Percival Graves, resident of number 15, West 85th Street, had been discovered trapped inside his own apartment. In actuality, the apartment had been the first place the Aurors had searched, but Graves had been placed under a powerful anti-detection spell that they had missed the first time around. He had screamed at them when he saw them come in, trying desperately to be seen. 

In fact, it was partially thanks to Tina Goldstein who had come by herself because she had the sneaking suspicion that something had been overlooked. It was thanks to her that he wasn’t going to die of starvation on his living room rug while Grindelwald pranced around wreaking havoc at MACUSA.

It was impossible for him to compile all the levels of security that had been breached. Grindelwald had lauded over him, never saying what he was doing explicitly, but he would laugh about his infiltration and his manipulation of a young man named Credence Barebone. Grindelwald took delight in telling him all the details. _Oh, he’s absolutely your type, Percival. You should see how he almost swoons in my arms. Pathetic._

Evidently Grindelwald knew about that. Or rather, that was where he had slipped up. He had been in a bar over on 133rd Street on Hallowe’en. The MACUSA Masquerade Ball was that night, but despite Seraphina’s threats that if he didn’t show up she would permanently transfigure him into a hedgehog and keep him in a cage on her oak desk, he decided he could make a late hour appearance. Hiding inside a bar with other people like him was enough of a mask that he needed for that night.

There was an informal sort of wake being held that night for Harry Houdini. Despite possessing no magical talent of his own, he had managed to gain a reputation in both wizarding and non-wizarding circles and was often held up as a prime example for the repeal of Rappaport’s Law. 

The club singer, a certain Louisa Pineberry, suited up in a tuxedo that was enchanted to glitter with tiny stars when she moved, crooned about lost love. It was when she began her third number that a young man with a mop of dark, curly hair approached him.

He said that he was a university student from Munich, visiting his uncle in New York. The talk was infectious, and it was as if Graves had never met anybody as charming or quick-witted as this young man. About an hour later, when Graves had downed his sixth shot of whiskey, a hand, soft and delicate, touched his thigh. Graves made a move of his head to show the anonymous young man where the backroom was. His would-be lover shook his head and then leaned close and whispered in his ear that he wanted to go home with him.

They had apparated into his apartment, and Percival was removing his coat and scarf when he heard a voice behind him mutter a curse, and he was immobilized as his back hit the floor. The figure of the young man loomed over him, except it wasn’t the young student, but the menacing figure of Gellert Grindelwald, a face he had seen plastered across a hundred newspapers. 

“Good night, Percival,” and he had knocked him out.

Every morning he would cut a chunk of hair from Graves’ head, and Graves was forced to watch as the bones crushed and skin melted and reshaped until he was staring at his double. Graves didn’t want to think about the long-term effects of the potion and the adverse effects it had on Grindelwald, but he supposed that it probably wouldn’t harm the dark wizard as much.

He comes back to himself slowly. “Tina. Why weren’t you with the initial search team?”

Tina reaches down to untie his bonds. “Technically, I’m not an Auror, sir. I came on my own. You…I mean Grindelwald, demoted me. I had a hunch that because he was using Polyjuice, there must be a place where he was keeping you.”

“Consider yourself rehired,” and he rubs his wrists. “I need to see Picquery.”

“With respect, sir, I think you should see a healer first.”

“Goldstein, if you don’t perform a side-along apparition with me to the Woolworth building right now, please do feel free to stay in whatever lowly position Grindelwald put you in. What was it? Coffee boy?”

“Wand registry.” She colors slightly.

“I promise that once I see Picquery, you’ll have your job back, and you can take me to whichever goddamn healer you please.”

Tina nods and gripping his arm tightly to support him, they apparate together.

Graves would later recall his entry into Woolworth as perhaps one of the more dramatic incidents in his career as an Auror. Tina half-holding him up, struggling to walk, and the quiet hush coming over the building as he limped along. He learns later that his obituary, with a few touching, if not overtly sentimental lines from Picquery, had been published that morning. He is halfway to the elevator when a photographer from the Daily Ghost realizes that the Director of Magical Security, is not, in fact, deceased.

His haggard, bearded face would show up on the morning edition of the Daily Ghost, and he never makes it to the elevator. Instead, the headline ran: _Assumed dead Director of Magical Security NOT dead, makes HEROIC walk across Woolworth Building before fainting_. The crisp corners of the edition thump on his chest when he wakes up the next morning in a private ward in St. Panteleimon’s General. Seraphina Picquery, tall and imposing, looms over him.

“Six broken bones, an injured spine, an arm that probably will never heal properly, and a caterpillar that has somehow made a nest on your face. What the hell happened, Graves?”

“I should have come to the Hallowe’en party,” he begins and lays out the whole of his sorry, stupid tale. When he mentions the part about the disguised student, Seraphina groans loudly.

“You always had a type, even at Ilvermorny. That’s how he caught you?” Her tone is light-hearted, and she doesn’t seem to blame him, it seems. She merely nods her head sympathetically as if it could have happened to anyone and not simply the director of magical security. 

“There was a British magi-zoologist involved, a Mr. Newt Scamander. He was in possession of a Thunderbird. Yes, I know, but it’s gone now, and we are actually reviewing the legislation regarding the importation of magical creatures.”

“You can’t be serious. Theseus’ younger brother?”

“It would seem so.”

“And the Obscurus?”

Seraphina knits her eyebrows together. “We presumed he was dead, but Goldstein came to me and told me that he’s alive and apparently staying in her apartment. The Obscurus was removed during the confrontation in the subway station, and he’s no longer a threat to magical society.”

“What will happen to him?”

“We’re bringing him to testify at the Grindelwald trial in January. Albus Dumbledore will be making an appearance.”

“Is that wise? You don’t know what he was doing to the boy. He would have to testify as to the exact nature of his relationship with Grindelwald, and they might put him under Veritaserum.”

“You mean…” and a look of horror crosses Seraphina’s face. “That fucking bastard.”

Graves relaxes a muscle that he hadn’t realized he had been tensing. If only he hadn’t been so careless, this boy could have been found more quickly. If he had only trusted his team, none of this would have happened. He feels Seraphina’s hand touch his shoulder and looks up.

“It’s not your fault, Graves,” she says and squeezes gently. He doesn’t quite believe her, but he’ll put that away for when he’s alone. 

“How is Alexandria?” 

“I’m about to go see her, actually. She’s on the floor above yours.” She had met Alexandria Acevedo at Ilvermorny, and Graves had spent years covering their tracks to make sure that their relationship remained secret while Picquery claimed her rise to the top. 

“It would appear you have another visitor,” and she flicks the door open to reveal a slightly bewildered Tina Goldstein. 

“I promise I wasn’t listening, ma’am,” says Tina in the squeakiest voice that he has ever heard pass her lips.

“It’s alright, Goldstein. You can come in.” 

“One more thing,” says Seraphina, and she pulls Graves’ wand from her inside pocket and places it into his hand. Blackthorn and dragon heartstring: it’s his and his alone.

“Thank you,” and Seraphina leaves the way Tina has come in.

“I’ve been reinstated as an Auror in your division. Thank you, sir.”

“Good. Now, will you tell me what you’re going to do with the Obscurial?”

“He’s not going to harm anyone. The Obscurus is gone.” 

Tina’s gone on the defensive; this was why he had handpicked her, for her bulldoggish sensibilities; once she had seized on an idea, she wouldn’t let it go until it had been accomplished. It made him bristle to think that Grindelwald had dismissed her.

“Tina, he’s under no harm from the Aurors by order of the President.”

“My sister and Newt have been teaching him. He’s a fast learner, and things seem to come naturally to him; he’s surprisingly adept at wandless magic. He mentions you frequently.”

“He’s never met me; he only knows some mimicry of me that seduced him into thinking that he was wanted. When he is sufficiently trained in magic, come to me and I’ll get him some position in MACUSA. It might be wand registry, but I’ll give him something to try and repair the damage that I did.”

“Mr. Graves, sir, it isn’t your-”

“I don’t think he would want to see my face again after what happened. Dismissed.”

Graves couldn’t tell if he was trying to protect Credence or himself. It’s for both their sakes, but he cannot help but wonder if this boy that Grindelwald had so cunningly seduced and then abandoned was anything at all how he had been described. No, he would perform his silent, humble act, and maybe that would amount to some small measure of penitence.

*

The trial begins a few days after the New Year. The whole of Woolworth throngs with reporters and camera flashes, everyone hoping to catch a glimpse of the nefarious Grindelwald. 

With every passing week, Credence is introduced to something new about the wizarding world, and despite the excitement of magic, he has a sinking sensation that something crucial had gone missing. This was what Graves had promised him, but he can’t shake the feeling that he has been robbed for two decades. 

(Most days, he tries not to think of Graves. He finds himself rather unsuccessful.)

Newt had taken to answering whichever questions about the magical world he had, although he interjected that his knowledge of the wizarding community in America was slim. 

His hair has grown out, and he sometimes reaches up to rub the back of his head and feels a shock when there is no unevenness. 

He goes with Newt to buy a wand from a shop run by a Mr. Johannes Jonker. After about 5 hours of testing and with the boxes beginning to pile up on the floor, Jonker hands him a long wand that is made out of a knobbly Douglas Fir and contains a core of Thunderbird feathers. 

“ _Lumos_ ,” he says into the dust of the shop, and the hurricane lamp on the clerk’s desk comes alight with a flicker. 

Nothing he has had ever done has felt as right as this.

*  
The rest of January sees the city in a range of freezing temperatures. Queenie practically throws extra blankets at him, and Newt goes out more frequently, meeting with a man named Albus Dumbledore, in town for the trial. 

Tina comes home most nights exhausted; she is one of the key witnesses at the trial, and Credence wants to ask her every question that he can. Credence slips out onto the street to buy himself a paper and watch the alternating portraits of Graves and Grindelwald in the courtroom. Graves: implacable, stiff, a beard growing on his cheeks. It is Mr. Graves and not Mr. Graves who sways slightly in the moving photographs. 

He realizes that he is mourning something that hadn’t been real: a ghost attachment to a person who existed and didn’t really exist. 

The Obscurus is gone, and Credence is _magic_. 

*  
In February, Grindelwald escapes, and Credence comes down with a fever for three days. When he finally awakens, there is a new face in the apartment: round, cheerful, and mustachioed. He offers a hand to Credence.

“My name’s Jacob Kowalski. I’m a…friend of Queenie’s.” There is a certain amount of awkwardness to him that reminds him of Newt, but any doubts evaporate when the man hands him a white paper box. He lifts up the cover slowly and the smell of freshly baked goods rises to meet him.

“Food always makes people feel better, and I know you’re getting over a cold. They’re paczki. This one’s raspberry, this one is custard, and the one on the end is rose and pistachio.” 

Credence can immediately see why he is ‘friends’ with Queenie. 

“Thank you, Mr. Kowalski,” he says, and Jacob beams. 

It is only later, when Jacob begins coming around for Friday night dinners with loaves of bread or increasingly fancy pastries, that Credence realizes that Jacob is a no-maj. He watches them cooking together, Jacob smiling cordially when she dices garlic or onions for him with a flick of her wand. They complement each other perfectly. 

And if Jacob doesn’t leave until the next morning, well, that is none of Credence’s business.

*

The magic is coming faster and easier now; the other day he transfigured the tea kettle into a marble basin, and Tina begins to talk to him about taking a job at MACUSA.

“It’ll be an entry-level position, but it’ll allow you to integrate more easily into the wizarding community.”

“Won’t they ask for a résumé? I have no experience, so of course they’ll be suspicious. What if they recognize my face...”

“Credence, you’re not under harm from the Aurors anymore.” 

“Would I be trained as an Auror?” He tries not to make it sound like he’s asking about Mr. Graves, but there is only so much he can glean from the paper.

“Oh goodness, Credence, no. That takes years and is usually a very selective process. Only the most accomplished wizards achieve that status.”

“Then how did you work at wand registry then?”

Tina gasps a little. “Cheeky!” But there is a smile on her face.

*

Credence’s position at MACUSA begins the day after Newt departs for San Francisco on business, promising to return in the spring. 

The job, ironically enough, is in wand registry. He takes a side stint as a coffee boy, running all over MACUSA with mugs of coffee with one sugar. The elves who were sprinkled all over Woolworth are initially irritated with Credence’s poking about and misremembering of what floor he is trying to go to. Yet there is a certain coolness to it; he likes the way the light enters through the large glass windows. He makes sure to move out of the way when he sees the Aurors sweep through the atrium, hurrying off without a care for who is in their way. 

The work is tedious, but he hears snippets of conversation about Mr. Graves in the hallways from his coworkers. His ma had warned him against gossip, but no one knows him or why he harbors such an intense curiosity towards the man. 

“I heard Graves hasn’t been out in the field as much, since the Grindelwald scandal.”

“What was he like before Grindelwald?” asks Credence, slowly stepping into the conversation.

The portrait he gets is not unfair and not too terribly unlike the man he thought he knew.

It is on a slow March afternoon when the snow looks as if it will finally melt, and Credence is walking across the atrium with two cups of coffee in his hand and another two hovering around his ears, that he spots Mr. Graves. He is walking slowly, head bowed in brisk conversation with another Auror. He goes right past Credence without noticing him.

The beard that he had seen in the picture in the newspapers during the trial has vanished, but the man walks with a cane. His hair isn’t as severely cut, and the sight of him makes Credence want to run out and speak with him. This frightens him more than it should.

He slowly develops a rapport with his coworkers; he begins to open up, telling small jokes that elicit guffaws and earn him pats on the back. The gossip never dulls, and somehow, they always circle back to the Director of Magical Security. His supposed affair with Seraphina Picquery or how he singlehandedly rigged the election of 1920; his bachelorhood at the age of 39 and his propensity for wandless magic. With each new tale, Credence feels as if he is getting a little closer to him. Even if it is all conjecture, it is better than nothing.

After the first time he notices him, he becomes hyper-attuned to his presence. There he is standing outside the courtroom on the 80th floor, leaning heavily on his cane. Or taking a smoke break. Sometimes he sees Tina and hesitates to wave, afraid to implicate himself. _No, better not to approach him; who would I be to him?_

He begins going to the library at the very bottom of Woolworth, asking for any papers concerning Percival Graves. The librarian narrows her eyes at him through half-moon glasses, and he mumbles some excuse about shadowing the director and training to be an Auror.

In the stacks, Credence flits through papers dating back to 1917, detailing Graves’ service in WWI and his cases as head Auror in the years following the Great War. The images of Graves through the years acquire a sort of humor; Graves ages with each new image, and by 1923, the scorpion pins that Credence has such vivid memories of begin to appear in the press photos. Yet always, there is the firm posture and bearing that Credence knows so well. 

If he knew better, he might call it love, but this isn’t it. How could he be in love with fragments of someone he’s never truly met?


	3. Chapter 3

The months slink by carefully, and Newt finally returns in the spring with tales of sighting dragons in the Sierra desert and a pair of itinerant lemon colored puffskeins he had picked up in Denver. Tina chastises him a little bit but tells him that in the months that he has been away, there has been some motion in Congress regarding the ban on magical creatures. Newt colors brightly but doesn’t try to hide his grin.

In the heat of July, Credence moves out of the Goldstein’s apartment into a one room on the Upper East Side. The place is small yet cozy, and perhaps for the first time in his life, he feels as if he has some degree of privacy. He decorates the space will all the things that he has learned to express: plants in clay pots, a window box of herbs, and a few old, Japanese prints that he had found in an antique shop. Of course, he has a standing Friday night dinner invitation.

He has no right to be this peaceful, he thinks, but he moves through each day with an ease that, when practiced, translates into something effervescent. He is well-liked by his co-workers, and he believes that he will be promoted in late September. As always, he keeps an eye out for Graves, stealing glances when he can and checking the papers for news of the Auror’s exploits.

In mid-October, the gossip in MACUSA shifts from a quiet lull of the old conversations around Graves and Picquery and into something that threatens to boil over from all the excitement it generates. The annual Masquerade Hallowe’en Ball is a tradition several centuries old and the highlight of the year. The grand ballroom was decorated, and revelers donned outrageous, enchanted costumes as they prowled about the floor in search of dance partners and rum punch. 

“Oh, but you must go,” says Queenie when he asks her about it at dinner over roasted potatoes and chicken. “You’ll have never seen magic like it before, and everyone attends. Didn’t Director Graves go last year?”

Credence makes a strangled sound in his throat.

“No, I think that was the night he was captured,” says Tina, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “But he has attended in the past. You can come with us, Credence.” 

“And President Picquery always wears something that the papers will write about the next day. We have a whole host of costumes, don’t worry. And of course, Jacob will be making an appearance.”

“I will?” asks Jacob, and then he seems to remember. “Ah, yes, incognito as…who was it again?”

“Gondulphus Graves,” supplies Queenie. “Probably the most popular Hallowe’en costume since the 18th century.”

“Are you alright, Credence?” asks Tina.

He nods once. After dinner, when he helps Queenie to clear the dishes and charm the plates into washing themselves, she touches his arm gently, and his whole body tenses.

“Everything you’re feeling is fine, Credence,” she says. “You don’t have to be so afraid of talking to him; it’s not good to keep it all stuck inside for so long. With me and Jacob, we can’t be seen together. But for one night, maybe you can see him.”

What she says is absurd, but he doesn’t say anything, and maybe he doesn’t need to. He can feel her at the corners of his skull, not something intrusive, but a gentle pressure that isn’t uncomfortable. 

Instead he says the only thing he knows how to say out loud. “Thank you.”

Queenie gazes at him perhaps a little wistfully, but it isn’t pity. “I think these are done, don’t you? Now, have you given any thought to what you’d like to be for the ball?”

“No, I’ve never done anything like this before. Ma always shooed away trick-or-treaters when they stopped by on Hallowe’en.”

“That’s alright; we’ve plenty of masks over here! If you just give me one moment, I’ll go get them out.”

A box that had been sitting under a nest of blankets levitates and plops itself with a dull thunk in front of Credence. 

“Teen and I’ve been going for years, but some of these we’ve actually had since Ilvermorny.” She pulls out a golden half mask covered in feathers and tries it on. “I wore this one last year and went as a goldfinch.”

There are dozens of masks in the box, and Credence pulls out one made of black leather with a long, protruding beak. He knows this one from the books Ma would lecture from: the plague doctor. The Second Salemers were always on the lookout for a new epidemic that would save the good and pure from the wicked witches that stalked North America.

“I’d like to wear this one if you don’t mind.” Queenie smiles at him. 

“Not at all. We’ll make sure you cut quite the figure when the veil is thinnest.”

*  
On Sunday, October 30th, 1927, Credence arrives at the Goldstein apartment. He has learned how to carefully sneak past the landlady and slips in through the door without much noise.

He is greeted with the sight of a full apartment, and more surprisingly, a tall awkward figure that bears a very close resemblance to Newt Scamander, albeit with slightly longer hair and dressed in traveling clothes. He appears to be in very animated conversation with Tina.

“I’m going as a Helioraptor disguised as a human,” he grumbles loudly. The bowtruckle on his lapel blows a raspberry.

“Newt, it’s a masquerade ball. The whole point is to be in disguise!” Tina is dressed in a dark blue gown that seemed to flit this way and that, the fabric light as gossamer, but studded with silver. On her face is a feathered mask that he makes her look like a great horned owl.

“Oh, Credence, please come in,” says Queenie, already masked with a white, fluted full face covered in glittering patterns. She seems as if she was wearing a halo of sunlight that flows easily with the grace of her movements.

She hands him the black mask that he had chosen a few weeks ago. From a corner, Jacob, in a fat-cheeked mask with a large, protruding nose, waves at him. 

“Now, if you two will stop bickering, and Newt puts on his mask, we can arrive fashionably late.”

“Credence, you look very nice,” Tina says, thrusting a simple, black half mask into Newt’s arms. “Are you ready to go?”

He puts on the mask and takes hold of her arm and together they apparate to the Woolworth building.

Credence has never been inside the grand ballroom before, only catching glimpses when a crack in the door had been opened as he had hurried past with coffee. It had been paneled in dark oak if he had remembered, and the space had seemed as if it would stretch on forever, like the inside of Newt’s case. 

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight that greeted his eyes; the space that he had glanced out of the corner of his eye had been transformed into something entirely luminous. The walls were lined with large, glowing crystals that shimmered and reflected the light of an impossibly large chandelier that loomed high in the ceiling. The masked dancers whirled around the room while, along the side, a twelve-piece orchestra played. 

Miniature candles hung throughout the air, flitting by slowly, casting reflections on the rocks that seemed to have been embedded in the wall. The room, although miles in the air, had become almost subterranean. Credence looked to his left, and he could see Jacob’s lips curving in wonderment. 

“We’re going to go dance,” says Queenie, and she takes Jacob’s hand, and they join the costumed, twirling couples.

Despite Jacob’s worries that he will be found out as a no-maj, he has already spotted at least six other figures in the same costume. They will be safe tonight.

He tells Newt and Tina, who look as if they are both considering asking the other to dance, but are hesitant, that he is going to go find his coworkers. He begins to make his way across the ballroom but catches himself gazing around at the space. The magic in the room seems to bristle with luster and unspool itself unencumbered.

He walks anonymously, so completely enraptured that, very soon, he has forgotten all about his mission to find his friends and discovers that he has become unaccountably thirsty. He slowly makes his way to the drinks table.

He takes a glass and begins to top it off with a dazzlingly pink liquid from a cut-glass bowl when a voice behind him murmurs, “I wouldn’t try that if I were you.”

It’s been an almost a year since Mr. Graves spoke to him. He puts the glass down.

“Unless you like the taste of sparkling Pepto-Bismol, go ahead, but I found it to be intolerably vile.”

Credence turns to face him, and of course, he is masked in what appears to look like a mask maker’s clumsy attempt at a grizzly bear. There’s a glass with a dark blue color in his hand and his cane in the other. It feels so mundane to see him here that Credence has to stifle a laugh.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m sorry, your mask startled me a little,” he says, struggling to find the right words. 

“Ah yes, a friend of mine insisted she pick this one out for me as payback for me missing last year’s function,” and he laughs darkly.

This was not how he had imagined meeting Graves again. He seems at ease, relaxed, even joking with him. He wanted to ask everything about him and find out what parts Grindelwald had missed in his disguise of the man who stood in front of him. What would he do if he kissed him? Oh god, he hopes this man isn’t a legilimens. 

A shudder escapes him; what if that had all been Grindelwald and he wasn’t like what Credence had imagined at all.

Instead, he asks innocuously, “Your friend?”

Graves points to a woman in a bright orange gown, deep in conversation with a tall woman with dark brown hair. He realizes that he is pointing to the President. 

“Mr. Graves, sir…I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to…I should have recognized you,” he stammers out. Might as well lie, even though he always knew exactly who he was speaking to. 

But he can see Graves’ lips pulling into a smile under the mask. He could never have guessed how much the man could smile. 

“Not your fault. And you are?” he begins, until a man comes rushing in between them. It’s Jacob.

“I’m so sorry,” Jacob says, slightly out of breath, to Graves and reaches up to fix his mask. Graves takes one look at him, focusing intently on the costume for a moment. He waves away his apologies and then downs the curling, blue liquid in his glass.

Queenie rushes by to pull Jacob out of the fray, gives a knowing look at Credence, and takes her partner back to the dance floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Newt leading Tina through an inelegant foxtrot. 

“The one thing they never warn you about is how popular your great-great relative is as a Hallowe’en costume every year,” says Graves.

“Would you like something to eat, sir?” Credence says, worried that Graves will run off after this run in. He gestures to a small dish of raw oysters, and the memory of the kiss stirs in him.

“No thank you, I hate oysters. Somehow despite all the hubbub that surrounds this night, MACUSA can never seem to find any good place to get catering.”

When had they become so close together and drifted so far away from the crowd?

“And you’re a plague doctor, I take it?”

“A friend lent me a mask.”

“So we’re both wearing something borrowed tonight.” A pause. “You still haven’t told me your name yet.” 

This particular game appears to be coming to an end. How much will he talk to him after this meeting? The music is beginning to fade into the next song, a lively tango. This conversation should be enough for him to give his name. He begins to answer, to tell Graves the truth when a loud voice behind him calls out his name. 

It’s a group of his coworkers, all in gaudy silver masks like a team of cats prowling in a midnight alleyway. 

“Credence,” they call and cajole to him. One of them drags him away from Graves, who watches him solemnly; if there is any recognition, he doesn’t seem to show it. 

As he is dragged off, Graves goes to refill his drink from the bowl lined tables, and Credence recognizes the figure that he has glimpsed so many times through the hallways of Woolworth. All traces of the man, warm and personable, had vanished.

He spends the rest of the evening in their company, and when the bell chimes for midnight, the whole crowd assembles into a circle and cast their wands toward the ceiling in a shower of gold and silver sparks. It is officially Hallowe’en, the evening when the night is clearest.

He keeps his eyes out for Graves the rest of the night but only catches him in conversation with Tina. When he says goodbye to his friends and to the Goldstein’s at the end of the night, he is exhausted and apparates back to his apartment. He places the mask on the side table in his bedroom and starts to remove his shoes and socks.

 _Oh, Credence Barebone, you are a proper fool_.


	4. Chapter 4

The mist that morning was thick and clear, and Credence sets to brewing himself a pot of tea. He begins to lay out the events of the evening. 

There had been so many interruptions in his conversations with Graves that he felt as if he had walked away with a mask full of smoke. Graves had been polite, humorous even. And oh god, he had been interested in Credence, not knowing who he was or that the secret history between the two of them was something he was completely unaware of.

Instead of answering any of his questions, Credence was left with a numbing ache in his chest that he forgot the sound of the tea-kettle whistling.

He realizes he has over boiled the water and, rather than wait for it to cool down, he reaches for his wand to cast a cooling spell. He must have overdone it because when he reaches for the glass again, the tea has frozen hard above the surface. It is too late to brew another pot, and Credence will have to wait until a break in his shift.

The morning is slow, and his colleagues appear rumpled, evidently fighting off hangovers with unsuccessfully conjured potions of alertness. A pair of women seem to be eyeing each other in the corner with something that is not terribly proper for an office space.

His supervisor, a tall, middle-aged woman of about forty-five, catches him daydreaming.

“Had too much rum punch last night, Mr. Barebone? And you with your fancy promotion last month. Well, there’s going to be no dawdling today; you’re on coffee boy duty for the entire Major Investigations Department.”

He has the impression that she doesn’t like him very much. Handing him a very long, detailed list of orders, she pushes him on his way.

He hasn’t delivered coffee since early August, but he knows the drill well enough. He gets on the elevator to the 150th floor all by himself, as the coffee cups that levitate around his head take up the whole space of the compartment. A crowd of people grouse and give him dirty looks as he ascends.

He knocks on the door of the main lounge, where he knows he can find most of the Aurors congregating. He finds Tina sitting in an armchair, head bent over piles of documents and face drawn up in a grimace. 

She smiles at him as he plucks her steaming coffee from the air and hands it to her. The other Aurors begin to crowd around him, searching for their own drinks, but not one scrutinizes his face or notices if his posture has changed. They merely mumble their thanks at him and then leave as swiftly as they came.

There is only one cup of coffee left hovering right above his earlobe and his eyebrows furrow when he can’t figure out who it belongs to. 

“That one’s probably for Mr. Graves,” says Tina. “I can take it to him if you’d like.”

“No, that’s alright. I should probably make sure that his drink didn’t get mixed up with someone else’s.”

He knows the reasoning sounds stale on his tongue, but Tina only frowns at him a little and doesn’t argue. 

“End of the hall, left-hand side.”

The view out the window is subsumed by clouds. He notices a ladybug crawling on the inside of the glass and wonders how long it will take before someone finds it and takes it outside. He knows he is stalling, but in a heartbeat, he crosses to the door of Graves’ office and raps three times.

“Come in,” and Credence pushes down gently on the handle and lets himself in.

The office is spacious, the walls lined with glass cases and a lit fireplace on the left-hand side. The window is bigger than the one in the Auror’s lounge at the other end of the hallway, and most of the space is occupied by a large oak desk covered in papers. He recognizes the bear mask from last night, positioned as a haphazard paperweight. 

Graves is standing at the window with his back to him, and for a moment, he thinks that the clouds that he sees amassing outside have by some dreadful means made their way indoors. And then Credence realizes that there is a faint, orange glow by his mouth, and it is just wisps of cigarette smoke.

Credence lets out an involuntary cough, and Graves turns sharply. 

“Your coffee, sir.” He tries to keep his voice even. 

Graves mutters a quick _accio_ , and the cup drifts lazily to land in Graves’ outstretched palm. He takes a sip and recoils quickly. Credence thinks he must have burnt his tongue and wonders if he too is stalling.

“Credence Barebone.” It’s not a question.

“I’m sorry, sir. I should have immediately told you who I was last night.”

Graves waves a hand, and the flames dance on his face. They seem to be circling each other. Standing opposite from him, he realizes that he is actually slightly taller than Graves, and it feels almost absurd.

“He told me about you.”

Grindelwald. The only tenable connection between them and the reason why either of them is standing there together in this room. Oh god, what had he told him? Graves knew about that.

“I can understand perfectly if you would never wish to speak to me again.”

“That’s not what I want. I wish we had met properly, like last night.” It feels like he’s screaming out from the bottom of the Hudson River. The smiles and cheekiness seem miles away now. 

Graves’ eyes twitch, but he doesn’t say anything. 

“I’m sorry for taking up too much of your time, sir.” He begins to head towards the door.

“There’s a bar over on 133rd Street; drinks are half-off tonight. Say about nine o’clock?”

“I’ll be there.”

*  
Imagine, if you will, a small bar tucked into the side of a building, visible to only those who have the password.

_“Haven’t been here since last year, I guess I’ve been avoiding it. It’s for people like…”_

Imagine a room cozy with couples unafraid to be seen together, a singer in a tuxedo crooning about lost love and ghosts. 

_“I spent the entire year looking for you.”_

_“I spent the entire year avoiding you.”_

Imagine a former Obscurial and the Director of Magical Security drinking half-off whiskey cocktails and laughing. 

Imagine a kiss that tastes like a meeting across a gap a thousand miles wide. 

_It’s against Credence’s better judgment, but Mr. Graves’ back pressed up against brick, his face to his, feels like absolution._

Imagine a clear night that doesn’t go wrong. 

_“Happy Hallowe’en, Credence.”_

_“Happy Hallowe’en, Mr. Graves.”_

**Author's Note:**

> We've reached the end! Happy Halloween, friends!
> 
> Many thank you's to MH for pointing out all my missing commas and listening to me harangue her about why I mostly work with poetry.
> 
> As always, any thoughts are appreciated. Thank you for reading! x


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